Anti-Israel stalwarts blame Zionists and Jews for Corbyn’s defeat in UK election

Former Labour MP, party leader’s ally claims Israeli diplomats caused loss; French politician says Likud party responsible for Boris Johnson’s victory

By Cnaan Liphshiz 18 December 2019, 5:59 am

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Cnaan Liphshiz was a Jewish World reporter at The Times of Israel

Labour lawmaker Chris Williamson, seen in 2018, was suspended by the party in February. (Jack Taylor/Getty Images via JTA)

JTA — More anti-Israel stalwarts across Europe are coming forward to blame the Jewish state and Zionism for the defeat of Britain’s Labour Party in last week’s elections.

Chris Williamson, a former Labour lawmaker and ally of party leader Jeremy Corbyn, added his voice to the choir in a video he posted Tuesday on Twitter.

“A hostile foreign government has mobilized its assets in the UK – which Israeli diplomats call their ‘power multiplier’ – in an attempt to prevent a Corbyn-led Labour government” from being elected in Thursday’s vote,” said Williamson, who left the party earlier this year after saying it had been too apologetic about its anti-Semitism problem.

To “normalize Zionism” in Labour, the assets had been “using faith organizations, many of them charities, to promote the anti-Semitism narrative,” he added.

British opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, gestures after casting his vote in the general election, in Islington, London, England, December 12, 2019. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

Jenny Tonge, an independent lawmaker who said in 2017 that anti-Semitism was rising because Jews were not criticizing Israel enough, wrote on Facebook that the British chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, who accused Corbyn of mainstreaming anti-Semitism in Labour, “must be dancing in the street. The pro-Israel lobby won our General Election by lying about Jeremy Corbyn.”

In response, 88 lawmakers penned a letter calling on the House of Lords to kick out Tonge, whom the Liberal Democrats suspended in 2016 over alleged anti-Semitic rhetoric, causing her to quit the party.

In Ireland, Kitty Holland, a journalist for the Irish Times who declared in 2017 that she does not “interact with Zionists,” apologized on Monday for writing shortly after the elections: “It’s a great result for Zionism. Monsters are roaring their delight.”

The tweet, she wrote, which she deleted shortly after posting, “resulted in a great deal of upset. I apologize sincerely for the hurt caused.”

Jean-Luc Melenchon during a protest over the government’s labour reforms in Paris on September 23, 2017. (AFP Photo/Geoffroy Van Der Hasselt)

On Friday, Jean-Luc Melenchon, a far-left politician from France who is often described as Corbyn’s counterpart there, blamed in a Facebook post “networks of influence from Likud,” the Israeli ruling party, for the Labour defeat.

Labour received 202 seats out of 650 in Parliament in Thursday’s elections, a 60-seat drop from its 2017 showing and its worst result since 1935. The Conservative Party under Prime Minister Boris Johnson received 365 seats, an increase of 48 seats.